Onion Expert

Owyhee Produce is lucky to have such an amazing extended “family” that surrounds our three-generation operated farm – from the wholesalers that distribute our produce to consumers that share their favorite recipes. In recent years, social media has allowed us to share live videos of our harvest, photos of our hard-working crew, and get to know our YOU – our followers!

Over the past few months we’ve gotten to know a gentleman by the name of Chris Holmes, a fellow farmer at Mata Farms in Mississippi, via our Facebook page. A few years ago, Chris was in need of a load of whites and reached out to Shay and Robin:

Chris said, “I saw you guys rise from a very small operation to building your own packing shed and I knew the story. I’d seen some of your social media and knew the members of the Froerer family were very strong believers.”

That conversation made an impression on Chris and when he saw the Treasure Valley begin to experience the effects of Snowmaggedon 2017, Chris felt led to reach out to us again.

“I could see what was actually happening through Shay’s videos and updates. I could see it was crushing the company, having known them. It was just totally unbelievable. It compelled me to enlist members of my church to pray without ceasing to turn the tragic situation around," he said.

More than just prayers, Chris made it a point to respond to each and every post we published with words of encouragement and humor to help us get through the winter. Maybe you’ve seen his creative memes in the comments? Our team began to look forward to seeing what Chris would come up with and it offered us some humor in a difficult time.

Social media has changed our industry in so many ways. At Owyhee Produce, we’re grateful for the opportunity it has given us to meet people like Chris and forge meaningful, supportive relationships in our industry. Thank you Chris – for everything!

For those of you on the buying desk, I imagine at least a few have you have wondered the reason behind the large amounts of Colossal and larger onions this year. There are, as you might expect, a few reasons for this.

I should explain what we do to create our desired size profile in the field. It's pretty simple; we plant onions closer together or farther apart depending on the size of onions we want to grow. The closer together the onions, the smaller. The farther apart, the larger. You can think of it like a litter of puppies all fighting to get something to eat, if there are more dogs than there is food, you end up with overall smaller pups and and a runt here and there. If the litter is small, you end up with a few really fat puppies. Onions are no different. They are competing for the nutrients from the soil, just like the puppies do for milk.

This crop wasn't planted farther apart though, it was Mother Nature who came in and created all that space. Wet, windy, and cold weather early in the onion's lives killed about 10% more than what most of us planned for. These dead onions made more space. Normally more space would mean larger onions, but mother nature followed up the wet, windy, and cold weather with almost perfect growing conditions for the remainder of the season. So not only did our onions have more nutrients available to them in the soil, but they also had warm days and especially warm nights that kept them growing. The end result, yields that were 10-15 higher than normal with stand counts that were about that much lower than normal. Mother Nature is Awesome!

Kyle Wheeler has been farming all his life. From running a hay business with his Dad growing up, to working in our fields now Wheeler says, "Once a country boy, always a country boy."

Wheeler has worked for the last 2 years as an Applicator for us - going over our fields with fertilizers to help each of our crops grow and stay healthy.

After being brought up in the farming lifestyle, Wheeler enjoys being out in the fields every day. Once in a while, he'll have the chance to take one of his kids on a tractor ride or they'll meet to have lunch together.

At Owyhee Produce, we couldn't be more thankful for our farmers like Kyle Wheeler that work hard every day and value family as much as we do.

Owyhee Produce is excited to announce the acquisition of new acreage in Murphy, Idaho!

This 400 acre addition will allow us to add to our onion productions in 2016 in order to meet the demands of our customers. The land could yield around 600 more loads, or 510,000 more bags than we do now.

Look for more updates on our land in Murphy as we begin to plant and harvest later this year!

Supplies in the Northwest are down again with total daily
shipments well below 200 loads.

That is just 70% of just 2 weeks ago.
Supplies are very manageable, but higher prices and fear of the
potential the downside has many buyers staying away from the phone.
Instead many are buying short to avoid any potential risk. NW
supplies will be available for another 2-3 weeks; after which
Southern Texas and Imperial Valley California will enter the market.
Prices may spike up again between now and then, but only if there is
significant rainfall in either of the two areas just mentioned.

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Planting has just ended in the
Northwest. This field E. Oregon will be ready for Harvest in
Mid-August.